Document Examination

A “questioned” document is any signature, handwriting, typewriting, or other mark whose source or authenticity is in dispute or doubtful. Letters, checks, driver licenses, contracts, wills, voter registrations, passports, petitions, threatening letters, suicide notes, and lottery tickets are the most common questioned documents, although marks on doors, walls, windows, or boards would also be included by definition.

QDE or Questioned Document Examination has been a profession at least since 1870.

A number of famous cases over the years, some involving wrongful conviction — the Dreyfus affair; Bruno Hauptmann and the Lindbergh Kidnapping; the Hitler Diary profiling controversy; and Clifford Irving’s forgery of Howard Hughes signature and Mormon documents — were showcases for the talents of various experts at QDE. It’s strength, drawn from civil law, is that expert opinion can overturn (alleged) eyewitness opinion.

Historically QDE has been somewhat of an inclusive profession, even to the point where so-called pseudo-experts (in palmistry and fortune-telling) were sometimes welcome, and even today, it suffers from a bit of identity crisis in that at least eight different, or related, areas can be identified.

Questioned Document Examiners – A document examiner analyzes any questioned document and is capable of more than just questions of authorship limited only by their access to laboratory equipment.

Historical Dating – These is work involving the verification of age and worth of a document or object, sometimes done by a document examiner, and can get as complicated as Carbon-14 dating.

Fraud Investigators – This is work that often overlaps with that of the document examiner and focuses on the money trail and criminal intent.